A Ballpark of Their Own : Recreation: Southland cities rush to build minor league baseball stadiums. But critics cite high municipal debt and reduced public services as possible risks.

Last year’s California League champs, the Rancho Cucamonga Quakes, are near the cellar as the 1995 baseball season comes to a close. But that doesn’t bother Quake fans much. They’re filling the Epicenter stadium to near capacity each night anyway, rooting on the home team and delighting in the between-inning antics of mascots Tremor and After Shock.

The 2-year-old, $11.5-million Epicenter is regarded as one of the finest ballparks in Class A minor league baseball. Set at the base of the San Gabriel Mountains in a former grape field, the cream-colored stadium boasts a modern scoreboard, cup holders on every seat and fireworks for each Quake home run.

“This is about the only thing I’ve seen that brings a sense of community, that brings everyone together,” said season ticket-holder Michael Marashlian. “It’s an old-time feeling that you just don’t see anymore.”

Now other Southern California communities are hoping to emulate that old-time feeling and are rushing to build minor league stadiums.

Lancaster and San Bernardino are breaking ground this month on new ballparks. Ventura is considering one. So is Riverside. And--in addition to Rancho Cucamonga--new stadiums have gone up in Adelanto and Lake Elsinore in the past few years.

But the price for such wholesome fun can be steep.

Consider Lake Elsinore. Since opening in April, 1994, the Diamond, home of the California Angels-affiliated Lake Elsinore Storm, is by many measures a grand-slam success. The graceful, state-of-the-art ballpark has strong attendance. City leaders say the team’s presence has rejuvenated the town by helping it overcome its image as a rundown community of low-income retirees and bikers. And they believe the stadium will encourage a host of new development nearby that will boost the city’s tax base.

So far, however, the stadium has plunged the town of 25,000 deeply into debt as cost overruns and added amenities pushed the final price tag to $22.5 million, nearly triple the original estimate. Lake Elsinore is running a $3-million annual deficit on the ballpark, and opponents charge that the city’s ability to provide basic services to residents is now threatened.

“We have to realize what it’s going to cost us for this joy,” said Lake Elsinore City Councilman George Alongi, who opposed the stadium. “Some folks in Lake Elsinore cannot afford to go to the game. They don’t have proper streets and sewers in their neighborhoods. But they’re footing the bill.”

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What they’re paying for is a piece of the boom in minor league baseball that is sweeping the nation, thanks in part to last season’s major league strike. Soaring attendance figures also are credited to a general reawakening of the public to the family-oriented virtues of watching minor league ball. Added to the mix is a 1990 agreement between major and minor leagues that required minor league stadiums to meet certain minimum standards.

Local politicians who have voted to fund new stadiums in the past few years say they are taking pains to minimize risks. Most admit that the city’s investment will never be entirely recouped, but they contend that the money is well spent for a recreational activity desired by their communities.

But some critics argue that the leaders in those communities are naively gambling with public money--and in some cases the risks of such ventures will be great.

In Lancaster, Councilman Michael Singer cast one of two dissenting votes against the proposed $7-million stadium--even though the Riverside Pilots agreed to relocate to the new ballpark and pay an unheard-of $300,000 a year in rent plus operating costs. Singer believes that the city did not elicit enough voter input and that the soft, aerospace-dependent economy can ill-afford such a luxury.

The city plans to fund the project with a five-year loan, which will be repaid by the team’s lease payments and sales of city-owned land surrounding the stadium. When the principal comes due, that also will be paid off by land sales, said Lancaster Mayor George Runner.

“We felt that in many baseball deals before, many communities were too generous with the teams,” Runner said. “We have not risked any level of service by any stretch of the imagination.”

Still, such ventures make skeptics uneasy. One concern in Lancaster is that the city is committed to completing its stadium by April, in time for the team to start its next season there. It was Lake Elsinore’s rush to finish its stadium in just eight months that many blamed for its ballooning construction costs.

What’s more, the yet-to-be-renamed Pilots, who are affiliated with the Seattle Mariners, are leaving Riverside because they now reside in an old stadium where alcohol sales are banned and attendance is an anemic 800 per game. At the new Lancaster facility, Pilots general manager Matt Ellis expects to draw 3,000 a game right off the bat.

That might be a safe bet, but Zane Mann, publisher of the California Municipal Bond Advisor newsletter, worries that in some ballparks “we might see a repeat of past follies by municipalities that piled up debt to pay for a vast array of public projects--from golf courses to convention centers.”

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In building its new, $13-million stadium for the San Bernardino Spirit, the city is taking a common financing route: The city redevelopment agency will float a 20- or 30-year bond, to be repaid out of agency funds. To replace that money, the city is counting on tax increment--the extra tax dollars generated when a redevelopment project boosts property values.

If that tax increment does not materialize, Ray Salvador, assistant to the mayor of San Bernardino, acknowledged that future redevelopment projects would have to be curtailed.

There are other risks. Some economists warn that hopes that a stadium will serve as a catalyst for economic growth are largely unfounded. Robert A. Baade, a professor of economics at Lake Forest College in Lake Forest, Ill., has studied the effects of stadiums on city economies and found that they tend to realign economic activity--citizens may forgo a night at the movies in favor of a ballgame, for instance--rather than boosting the overall economy.

The exception is when a team attracts many visitors, who patronize the city’s restaurants, stores and gas stations. But even with major league baseball, Baade does not find enough money coming into an area to offset public expenditures. And he deflates the argument that a ballpark will help attract other types of businesses. “There’s absolutely no correlation between professional sports presence and the locating of other enterprises in the community.”

Baade notes that stadiums provide mainly low-wage, part-time jobs. From an economic standpoint, he said, public money would be better spent on an industrial park, which would generate higher-paying jobs.

Despite the concerns, the stadium building boom will probably continue. Joe Gagliardi, president of the 10-team California League, said he is negotiating with four other communities that want minor league ball and expects more stadium proposals by next year.

Proponents of the new stadiums argue that critics miss the point. One of the functions of local government is to provide public recreational facilities--and what better than a much-loved activity that generates civic pride and goodwill, they say.

“This team has made the whole community proud to be here,” said Roy Englebrecht executive vice president and part owner of the Quakes, a San Diego Padre farm team. “Look at the kids--this is where they want to be.”